…To me the tragedy of Willy Loman is that he gave his life, or sold it, in order to justify the waste of it. It is the tragedy of a man who did believe that he alone was not meeting the qualifications laid down for mankind by those clean-shaven frontiersmen who inhabit the peaks of broadcasting and advertising offices. From those forests of canned goods high up near the sky, he heard the thundering command to succeed as it ricocheted down the newspaper-lined canyons of his city, heard not a human voice, but a wind of a voice to which no human can reply in kind, except to stare into the mirror at a failure.
Arthur Miller, “The ‘Salesman’ Has a Birthday,” The New York Times , February 5, 1950
…To me the tragedy of Willy Loman is that he gave his life, or sold it, in order to justify the waste of
it. It is the tragedy of a man who did believe that he alone was not meeting the qualifications laid
down for mankind by those clean-shaven frontiersmen who inhabit the peaks of broadcasting and
advertising offices. From those forests of canned goods high up near the sky, he heard the thundering
command to succeed as it ricocheted down the newspaper-lined canyons of his city, heard not a
human voice, but a wind of a voice to which no human can reply in kind, except to stare into the
mirror at a failure.
Arthur Miller, “The ‘Salesman’ Has a Birthday,”
The New York Times
, February 5, 1950
Joyce Carol Oates article.
New York Times...Is America still a Land of Opportunity.